Since coming to live at Ellesferth Castle, Charlotte had begun to appreciate the calm and quiet of the evening more than any other part of the day. The dishes washed and put away, the tables wiped down and the floors swept clean, she would take her seat near the fire and sew, or—if her aunt happened to turn in early for the night—read through a book pinched from the library.
Sometimes Maggie would sit up with her now that the young maid had taken on a full-time position at the estate. More often than not, they would talk about meaningless things that never failed to bring smiles to their faces or send them into fits of giggles. Tonight, the two of them were bent over the edge of a tablecloth, their fingers working over a section of damaged embroidery. A few paces away, Mrs. Faraday sat with her feet up on the hearth, her latest knitted creation coming to life beneath the click of her needles.
The hired girls had returned home for the evening and the men had retired to their rooms above the stables, where they could drink and smoke and swear without the watchful eyes of Mrs. Faraday boring into them.
Charlotte tilted a section of the tablecloth towards the fire, the better to see the stitches that needed to be removed. Her neck ached from bending over her work, but she needed a task that would keep her mind and her hands occupied.
For the entire day she'd taken on every task her aunt had given her, burrowing into the chores with a fervor that left her arms quivering and and her fingers numb with fatigue. Even now, her eyes burned and her shoulders sagged, but she wasn't ready to go to bed, to set her head on her pillow and give her mind a moment of freedom. She already knew where her thoughts would stray, how quickly her mind would settle on the image of a man with thick blond hair that shone with hints of silver in the firelight, his green eyes seeming to possess a power that pierced through her with every glance.
She hadn't seen him for three nights since, when Jenson had arrived and nearly chased her out of Lord Hartley's bedroom while wielding a stack of silk handkerchiefs and a lint brush. Unable to sleep, she'd gone into the library and curled up in one of the chairs, her head nodding only once or twice before the faint light of dawn crept through the windows.
I am here because I killed a man.
Her fingers slipped as the phrase played over in her mind for the hundredth time, the small scissors she held in her right hand accidentally snipping a bit of skin on her left. She winced and lifted the inside of her wrist to her lips, where her tongue encountered the metallic tang of blood.
"Are you all right, Miss?" Maggie's voice was low, presumably so their conversation wouldn't disturb Mrs. Faraday and her knitting.
"It's nothing," Charlotte assured her. "Only a scratch."
"No, Miss. I don't mean that." She set down her own portion of the tablecloth and leaned forward. "You've been a quiet thing all day, and you hardly touched your food at dinner."
"I am well." Charlotte managed a small smile. "Simply tired, is all. I'm sure that a good night's rest will have me back to my former self, and you can cease your worrying."
"Of course," Maggie said, but there was something in the young woman's brow that made her appear to be still unconvinced.
Charlotte tried to return to her work, but the brief exchange with Maggie had torn through the barrier she'd constructed around her thoughts. "Perhaps I should turn in early," she admitted, and set her work aside as she moved to rise from her seat.
She had barely risen to her full height when a bit of movement near the door caught her attention. And then Lord Cowden was there, walking into the kitchen, his head ducked down to avoid striking it against the top of the doorframe.
Maggie was the first to move, the unfinished tablecloth sliding to the floor as she jumped to her feet and almost stumbled over the edge of her skirt in the process. Mrs. Faraday, however, didn't rise immediately. Still clutching her knitting, she took the time to finish a last row of stitches before returning her work to a basket beside the chair.
"My lord." The housekeeper stood up slowly. "I trust you're feeling better, if you've seen fit to make the journey all the way down here."
Charlotte stood still. The man who stood before her shared little resemblance with the figure she'd nearly mistaken for a soiled bundle of linens three days before. He was fully dressed now, his lean frame clad in a dark coat and breeches, well-tailored but fitting loosely on his undernourished body.
But it was the sight of his face that succeeded in pulling the air from her lungs. He was clean shaven, his cheeks and jaw clear of the blond and gold beard that had begun to overwhelm his slender face. His hair had also been trimmed, the ends of it curling just above his collar. He looked younger, more fragile, she thought. And then her eyes met his, and she found him gazing directly at her.
"I sent my valet to bed," he told Mrs. Faraday, while he continued to watch Charlotte from her place across the room from him. "And then I realized I needed to eat, and had no wish to trouble any of you with the burden of traipsing up and down the stairs at this time in the evening."
"How courteous of you." Her aunt sniffed. "I'll have Maggie fix a tray and bring it up—"
"There's no need to put forth so much effort," he interrupted. "I can eat here just as well as any other place. That is, if none of you are averse to my presence." Again, his gaze sought out Charlotte, but she said nothing. In fact, she wouldn't have been surprised to find that her tongue had gone and taken leave of her mouth entirely at the moment she saw him enter the kitchen.
"Maggie, fetch a few of the cold meats leftover from dinner," Mrs. Faraday ordered. "And Charlotte, something to drink for his lordship."
A sudden bustle of activity followed as they prepared the sparse wooden table for Lord Hartley's meal. He seated himself on a stool and waited in silence as each item was placed in front of him.
Charlotte set clean utensils and a mug of tea in front of him, her chin lowered so that she wouldn't catch his gaze. As she turned away, she heard him clear his throat.
"You've been avoiding me."
His words came out on a whisper, low enough that neither Maggie or her aunt could've overheard him.
She turned back to the table and wiped absently at nonexistent crumbs. "I've been busy, and you've been keeping to your room. There hasn't been any occasion for our paths to cross since I last saw you."
"Since you abandoned me," he countered.
She glanced at his face as he raised a forkful of potatoes to his mouth. There, just at the corners of his lips, she saw a hint of a smile before he began to chew.
"You seemed to be in capable hands," she told him, her own voice lowered. "And I had no wish to antagonize your Jenson. He seemed ready to toss me out on my ear if I refused to leave you to his care."
"Jenson is a fool," Lord Hartley said around a second mouthful of potatoes.
"Then why have him in your employ?"
"Because he is a loyal fool." He stabbed a piece of ham with the tines of his fork. "I haven't been the most tolerable company these last few months. Well, years, to be truthful. I wouldn't have blamed the man if he'd strangled me with my own neckcloth and tossed me into the Thames."
"Perhaps you're not as unlikable as you suppose." When his next bite stalled partway to his mouth, she dared to look him in the eye. "Or perhaps you pay him too well."
A flicker of amusement brightened his eyes, but he seemed determined to keep his mouth from betraying him. Another bite passed between his lips, and she couldn't prevent the grin that tugged at the edges of her own mouth.
"Does my hunger amuse you?" he asked, setting down his fork and reaching for his mug of tea.
"It pleases me to see that some semblance of an appetite has returned to you," she admitted. "I feel I could almost mistake you for a person in good health."
He sipped slowly at his tea, and when he glanced over his shoulder, she followed the line of his gaze. Her aunt, she saw, had returned to her place by the fire, her knitting grasped firmly in her hands once more. Maggie, on the other hand, had picked up a cloth and was wiping her way through a stack of dishes that had already been scrubbed and dried an hour before. Both of the women were far enough away that Charlotte didn't suspect them of eavesdropping.
"I'm not well," Lord Hartley said, the rim of his cup held only an inch from his mouth. "It took all of my strength to come down here this evening, and if I remove my elbow from this table, you'll have a mess of spilled tea to mop up."
She looked down at the arm that held the cup. Only a slight amount of trembling was visible in his wrist and fingers. "You should have stayed in your room. You'll do yourself no favors if you start gamboling around the house the moment you feel the briefest twinge of improvement."
"It's more than a twinge," he said, a touch of petulance lending an edge to his voice. "And I was restless. I'd been confined to my room for too long. Another hour and I fear I would have given in to the temptation to hurl myself out the window."
He was exaggerating, she told herself. And yet a nagging unease that there was some truth to his declaration wouldn't let her disregard his comment as mere flippancy. "Don't say such things," she whispered.
He set down his cup and reached for his fork, but his fingers wavered uselessly before he placed his hand on the tabletop. "I'm sorry." He bowed his head, his shoulders rounding forward as he inhaled deeply and breathed out again.
It returned to her then, that terrible urge to touch him, to place her arms around him and place her cheek against the soft waves of his hair. "Here," she said, her voice quavering as she reached out for his half-empty cup. "Allow me."
As she picked up the cup, he suddenly reached out for her arm. His fingers slid over and around her wrist, turning it towards the light of the fire so that she had to let go of his tea or risk spilling it on the floor. "You're hurt," he said simply, his thumb grazing the small wound the scissors had left on her arm.
"Oh." She saw the streak of blood, already beginning to dry and darken from its previous vivid red. "I was busy with a bit of mending, and... Well, it was merely an accident."
He held her wrist so that her arm was held out towards him, her palm upturned. She waited for him to release her, but his fingers continued their delicate perusal of her skin. There was something in his touch, a kind of reverence in the way his hand brushed over hers. And then he returned to her wrist, his thumb tracing a light circle over her sensitive skin.
A small gasp slipped out of her. She pulled her arm away from him, the tea and his dinner forgotten as she stood frozen to the spot, his searing emerald gaze locked with her own. It had been too much, too delicious a feeling to have his hands on her skin, and nearly frightening in how much she had wanted it to continue.
"I'm sorry." His words broke the spell. She blinked at him, puzzled at his apology, the second in as many minutes. For him, it had been nothing more than the barest of touches, a brief word of concern for the wound on her wrist, and then...
And then she had seen the expression in his eyes, the same look he had given her a week before. It was a look of hunger that, at the time, she had mistaken for a want of sustenance. But there could be no misinterpretation this time. During those fleeting seconds, his gaze had devoured her, and she—ill-mannered, improper, unwanted creature that she was—had not wished for it to end.
"Your tea," she said quickly, and reached for the cup a second time. When she turned away from Lord Cowden, she found herself caught in Mrs. Faraday's line of sight, the older woman's knitting abandoned on her lap, her dark eyes surveying Charlotte with an inscrutable stare.
***
He should leave. Hartley tested the thought, weighing it in his mind as he sat on the edge of his bed, yanking at a neckcloth that clung to his throat with all the temerity of a noose. He'd come to Scotland to absent himself from society, and here was society, or some small portion of it, stalking him in the guise of a diminutive woman with dark hair and silent footsteps.
The neckcloth fell to the floor, followed by his waistcoat. He still had his boots to remove, and his thoughts tripped back to the memory of Charlotte forcing him back into a chair before tackling his footwear; her head bowed, her hands on his legs, fingers brushing against his thigh...
He blew out a breath and tipped his head back until all he saw was the gloom of the ceiling above him. No, this would not do. He should return to London, avail himself of the services provided by a woman for whom he would feel nothing more than an emptiness in his pockets by morning. And there would be the feeling of shame, as well. He couldn't possibly forget that. For when was there not some measure of that familiar feeling gilding the edge of every choice he made?
He finished the task of undressing without thought, stripping down to his shirt and nothing else before slipping between sheets that somehow managed to hold a greater chill than the air outside of them. He would leave, he told himself again, as he thumped his pillow into some semblance of comfort. Not for London, though. He had no love for that place, for the muck and the crowds and the smoke. He despised the version of himself he became when he resided in the shadows of those filth-streaked buildings.
But where else could he go? Ellesferth was to have been his chance of escape. A pressure settled on his chest, nearly taking away his ability to breathe when he paused to question himself as to whether that escape was meant to be from the gossip-fueled glances of all of London, or an escape from everything, even his very life.
If Charlotte hadn't barged into his room five days before...
There was no escaping the truth of it. Coward that he was, he would have let himself die, would have forced Charlotte and the rest of the household to clean up the mess left behind by his inability to face his own shortcomings. He rolled onto his side, towards the window and the sound of rain pattering against the glass. He was not worth their trouble. The attention Miss Claridge had given him, the care she'd taken to see him bathed and fed, as if he were deserving of someone who would see to his wants and needs when he was too wrapped up in himself to bother... No, he was not worth any of it.
He'd told her that he'd killed a man. No, that phrasing put too fine a sheen on the matter. He was a murderer, was he not? It wasn't a fight he'd undertaken on a whim, an aberration in an otherwise flawless existence. He was a drunken lout, a man who consorted with whores, who gambled away his inheritance for no other reason than it was something to do. And it had succeeded in dulling something inside him, at least for a while.
In the morning, then, he would go. Jenson would grouse about the upheaval so soon after arriving, but no doubt Mrs. Faraday would be glad to see the back of him and his meagre retinue. He would decide where to go once he'd placed a few miles between himself and Ellesferth, when the urge to seduce and ruin someone like Miss Claridge, someone who existed on a level so far above him, was no longer something he feared could be acted upon.
Tomorrow, he reminded himself, as he listened to the rain and dreaded the night ahead.
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Ten days. Ten days since I've updated! Apologies all around. I have a couple of deadlines hanging over my head, plus life jumping in and smacking the occasional cream pie in my face. As it is wont to do. Hopefully once the deadlines whistle by I won't be as slow with this story. Hopefully!
And thanks to all who have been reading along with it so far! Your reads, comments, adds, and everything are such great motivation!
Quenby Olson